Scene #7746:

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	It might seem like somewhat stupidly, or perhaps even arrogantly, choosing Persephone's home turf, to send coordinates anywhere orbiting the superplanet, rather than down on the ground. Lilian certainly must have reasons for choosing a quaint little station, out in the sticks of the great void, incidentally not too far --relatively speaking-- from the first of her rare missions amongst the stars. It probably has something to do with how small it is. Quiet. Almost cozy, in a slightly melancholy, eleven PM dive bar sort of way. It's evidently little more than a fuel station for the various FTL craft that have to get between warpgates out here, with the ever in demand amenity of space to get out and stretch legs, see a quaint little arboreum, sit around a mid range cafe, and stare out big, paroramic windows into the vastness of space, like sitting under warm lights at a corner table at a fast food join with only the closing staff around, staring out into the night. Lilian is waiting around about as 'dressed down' as it gets. In fact, it looks like all she did was remove her school jacket and pin so she just has the white blouse and black red bow. It means she didn't go home yet. A thick book is to be expected, even bound in utterly ancient leather and written incomprehensibly as it is. It probably has something to do with there being nobody here, at the other end of the tiny station from the diner, artificial lights on a screen of quaint walkabout greenery to one side, the sparkling dark to the other.
Persephone Kore	Phony's presence can't touch Lilian's cracked-glass mind, but it's still palpable in the air, a subtle shift in atmosphere. That announces her arrival a good half-minute before she actually finds her way to the little arboretum. "You're so nice to me," she says, as soon as she's close enough not to have to raise her voice. "You didn't have to take me to a place like this, you know." Her own outfit seems more casual than her usual, too. There is no scarf draped around her shoulders, her arm-warmers are a deep red rather than Concord orange, her dangle earrings aren't in, and her shoes have a little less heel. This is probably how she dresses when she doesn't expect to have to go out, though that'd imply she actually wears a keyhole sweater on a day-to-day basis. I do!~ "Earth is our cradle, of course. But I always thought space stations were the most human places." She walks up to the glass, close enough for her breath to fog it like an awful snotty kid at the aquarium, and smiles thoughtfully out at the void. "Every inch of this, someone made on purpose. 'The human part isn't the ear, but the hole we make for the earrings; lipstick is real, but lips are not.' I love that a lot." If not prompted, it takes her a moment to recollect herself and glance over at Lilian with just a slight hint of sheepishness in her typical warm smile. "I'm sorry. You wanted me here for a reason, right? Whatever it is, I want to help you, little star."
Lilian Rook	"You're overestimating how much of it is personal generosity." Lilian says, without her eyes leaving her page at first, in the way of someone who reads so much professionally that they've mastered the ability to converse and fully absorb the paragraph they're on for resuming later. She closes the tome and sets it down. "But it isn't as if I hate you. If anything, I don't even dislike you as a person. The circumstances under which we met . . ." Lilian lets it hang for a while, with the casual yet intense thoughtfulness of a book club turn. "Come to think of it, I was the only one who didn't hit you. I don't expect gratitude for it of course, but I hope it's illustrative of where the conflict lay. Far outside of 'not backing down', certainly." She thinks about the space station comment . . . more than she really needed to, for such a casually babbled opinion. "I think that's true." Lilian begins. "Which is why I think people need to see 'the earth' more than they do. It's necessary, from time to time, to remember that there are things that aren't made by humans. Things that were there before. Which don't particularly care about anyone, and aren't out to do anything in particular. Humans can't really be fulfilled without other humans, but if all they're surrounded with, all their lives, is 'humanity', they often fall too deeply into the pattern, get drawn too deeply into the theatre, lose themselves inside their own, overdeveloped tribal lobes. This station will eventually stop being here, when people stop having a use for it, but the earth will still be there for you whether your life is going perfectly or just terrible." "Or, in other words, if people's thoughts are the biggest things in the world, there's nowhere to escape when they turn sour." Lilian shakes her head. "Well, obviously that's not what I meant to discuss. I'm glad to see that you really didn't bring a coterie of pet girls. Not that I believe you would lie about it on purpose, but I can't speak for their capacity to beg or trick you into it. That means I can do this the easy way." Lilian breathes out deeply, but it lacks the kind of bracing hesitance of someone rehearsing a request at the last second. Rather, it has the resigned steadiness of 'what happens, happens'. "I can't help but notice that you've made your fifth attempt at trying to speak to me about ghosts, school, children, broken noses, and your bafflingly specific daydream hypotheticals." "Why?"
Persephone Kore	"I don't feel badly at all towards the people who hit me," Persephone responds with a reciprocal thoughtfulness, leaning against the window with one forearm propped up on it and turning to face Lilian. "I was really doing terrible things, wasn't I? And everything turned out okay in the end, thanks to you and them." Her smile broadens, taking on daydreamy undertones. "But I appreciate you being gentle with me even more. It's because you were so serious like that, you know, that I realized I was the irresponsible one." She moves to sit down on a comfortable arboretum bench just a few steps away. Conspicuously, she's at one end of the bench rather than the center; there's plenty of room for you to sit beside me! Ahaha, but I can't blame you if you don't want to. Maybe this is too serious for silly things like that. (The notion of "pet girls" doesn't get a verbal response, but she does cover her mouth with a hand and gleefully shut her eyes to cram back an undigified giggle.) Then: "Why?" The question's somewhat veiled, but Persephone doesn't stop to consider the subtleties of Lilian's refusal to say whether those fragments-of-the-past are really true. She frowns slightly, staring off (literally) into space. It's the expression of someone considering how to explain color to the colorblind. The concepts are simple, but where do you start? What words do you choose? I can't even feel her heart for hints. It's like being a little kid again. This really is the worst. "Because," she finally says, "I think we're very alike in some ways, little star, and very different in others, and I want to know how that happened. Because the things that bring me joy make you feel alone instead, and I think that's sad. And because for the first time, I don't know how to make someone I like happy." She looks up, her expression somberly neutral. If Arthur were here as one of her Pet Girls, he might conceptualize that face as 'the talksprite that only appears once or twice in the whole game'. "Is that the question you meant to ask, Lilian? I don't have anything to hide from you, you know."
Lilian Rook	"Don't give them too much credit." Lilian replies, drily. "They were mostly pretty helpless. Sometimes I wonder how they get on without me. Possibly dumb luck. Possibly I'm simply unlucky enough to always get the missions that turn out to be the most difficult. Perhaps that's just meant to be." She responds to the humour with an equally deadpan "You know I'm right." She does, in the end, sit. Discarding her book, it levitates near her in mildly witchy fashion, whilst she folds one leg over the other and places her hands over her knee. She doesn't watch Persephone's face while the other girl thinks, but rather keeps her roaming stare occupied with those 'signs of the earth' she was speaking of earlier. There likely wouldn't be any point to watching anyways. "I'm not particularly hiding it from you on purpose, you know." says Lilian, midway through the silence, without elaborating on what 'it' is. "Of course, there are many good reasons for me to use it since I have it, but I'm not like Langstrom. I'm not so egotistically obsessed with a paltry sense of free will that I need to pretend I can shut everyone out all the time, or that it's even necessary. But let's say that even if I tried to stop, it wouldn't do you any good in the end. What you're hoping to see isn't something that is supposed to make sense to people. Even people who don't make sense." She herself lets the quiet exist, once Persephone does her own level best to answer, however. It doesn't seem to be for any particular reason. Rather, there is only the charged feeling that saying too much of all this, too fast, might worry for straining some invisible fabric to a critical point, and it requires time to decompress between words. "Of course, it'd be perfect if everyone likes me. But that doesn't mean everyone should. For their own good, at least." A little longer, and a little colder. "I remember you said something about why Sapient Heuristics hadn't trained you worth anything in matters of security. It was something to the effect of the assertion that, when dealing with very, very, very gifted children, you can only decide to have absolute caution or absolute faith, from the very start. Trying to balance it halfway, or changing your mind later; that won't work, it'll only eventually lead to harm." A slow exhalation, and then her tone slips into a sister band to a hoarse, smokey casual. "Yeah. That's true. You could say it's something like that. But it's also far too late to do anything about it, and also, studiously not your concern. In fact, you'd all be best off not concerning yourselves with it." It's unclear whether she means Persephone's friends, the Concord, or literally everyone. "Your friends have the wrong idea. Dangerously so. They have no idea what their position is here, and I wonder if perhaps my hard work to let them choose to remain blissfully ignorant was in error. I think perhaps you have the only inkling out of all of them." "I know you've accepted that what you have is unfair, but I've done my very best to make things fair for everyone else. Which is why you should try to understand when I say that you shouldn't want to make me happy. I can make myself happy at any time, and I shouldn't want to." "But that's not quite what I was asking. Rather, that's not all of it. I don't know how accurate your information is, and I suspect the answer is 'not very', but you should know perfectly well why I have to ask how you got it, and what your intent with it is."
Persephone Kore	Persephone is good with long silences, even if these ones are more silent than I'm used to. The kind of person who needs to always be doing something, to always be saying something, is a fractal with all surface and no volume. Phony's heart by contrast has the placid sedateness of something weighed down heavily by the square-cube law. She exhales very, very slowly as Lilian finishes her explanation. Not exasperation, but deflated acknowledgement. "You did use it to get the things you wanted, at first," she says. Eye contact here would feel accusatory, so instead Persephone averts her face towards the greenery of the mini-arboretum. "You were a selfish kid, just like I was. But it didn't make you happy. Or, it did, but you also felt bad in a way you couldn't name. The awareness that you're supposed to feel more guilty than you do." She pauses for a few seconds, but this is a different kind of pause; not choosing her words but hesitating over whether to let them out, for more than one reason. Finally: "The things you want aren't right. And what's right, you have to try so hard to convince yourself you want. People hurt you in every way they helped me; you 'should' have turned out so much worse. But you're so determined not to! To keep convincing yourself that other people are... real. Somehow you turned out to be even more of a hero than I am, ahah!" "If you're trying that hard, I have to want you to be happy." But I do owe you an explanation, don't I? I've put that off long enough, little star.
Persephone Kore	Phony turns around in her seat, tapping a scratch on the bench's back-rest with her fingernail. Her expression's gently serious. "A boy named Tommy carved that. He was going to make a heart, with him and his date's initials. But they lost their nerve, and ran off without finishing it." She gestures back at the arboretum with a little sweep of her hand. "That was supposed to be an extra cargo bay, in the blueprints. But the shipping lanes changed, and they never got as much business as they thought they would. A homesick engineer planted it mostly on his own. Corporate still doesn't know." Finally, she points out the window into space. "That bright star, at the bottom of the 'V' constellation. It formed four billion years ago. It used to have a smaller binary twin, you know? They merged together five hundred million years back. They call it a 'blue straggler' now, but I don't think that's very nice." She leans back into a more comfortable sitting position, one hand resting on the bench's seat, the other on the arm-rest. Finally, she looks back at Lilian, her expression now a rueful little smile. "Everything has a story. Stories are fake, aren't they? But not any more fake than the wishes of a selfish little girl." Whether she's talking about Lilian, or herself, isn't clear. "That was how. This is why:" "I am supposed to give everyone, everywhere, what they deserve forever. I'm supposed to be the perfect girl who holds the world in her hands. But I'm not strong enough to be Atlas. Maybe I never will be. Deep down, that's too heavy for me to ever really want it." "I can hear everyone's hopes, everyone's wishes. I ought to want them all to come true. But selfishly, my heart isn't big enough. This is what I'm not allowed to want, and what I'm not strong enough to keep myself from doing: playing favorites." She laughs, for the first time in an unnaturally long while, and turns to stare back out the window into the starry void. "I have it so much easier than you. But I still can't get that right."
Lilian Rook	This time, Lilian uses her eyes to follow Persephone's subjects, because their tangible presence is important. Between them, there still seems no need to look one another in the eye and converse like company, and even perhaps that both find it almost too-normal. Lilian won't do anything about the look of mental calculus as Persephone taps the bench, endless points of information flicking on like transistors into circuits of probability, as easy as breathing. After all, she knows all about looking into the past through the spirit of an object, from Tamamo especially. However, that look of quietly recording information, rapidly filling in blanks and putting together answers, turns to one of the mental eraser quickly rubbing out lines and revising previous proofs, when Persephone turns to the arboreum itself, and then finally winds back and reverts all the way to blind, open absorption, when Persephone gets all the ways to the stars, all preconceptions squashed and put aside, albeit with laudible mental agility, when the scope of what she's saying expands to such a singularity of absurdity. She can only accept it. "Well, maybe I should be less surprised, given the scope of what I laugh to even think of calling 'your psychokinesis'. I'll admit that I'd taken you for more of a one track personality. Or rather, that abilities tend to shape people, and your shape didn't seem to fit something so physical and something so abstract together." Lilian replies, as airily as she can. "I really don't like that at all. I know of the mathematical concept, that information is indestructible; it can only be encrypted, never lost. But I did still prefer to believe that the universe was merciful enough to have a statute of limitations." That part was less breezy than she'd probably have liked it to be. "You need to play favourites, Persephone." Lilian finally says, and not 'Kore'. "Even if not between people, between the individual wishes that a person has." She pauses, but not to think; more of a wandering reminiscence. "Everyone is made up of innumerable wishes. There are big wishes they chase with their heart and mind at the same time, all the way down to a million little microscopic wishes they don't even notice, that they sort and isolate and cull every single second they're awake. We play favourites with ourselves. To be a person is to kill our wishes, constantly, because if they spread and grow and multiply, and we act on every little thing we want, we stop being human. Even if they're tiny, by bulk, they're the most." "People care for themselves like bonsai trees, and wanting every desire to come true is planting a field for harvest. And just like you can't give every little wish a voice, you shouldn't give voices to the wishes that other people would sift out and kill off on their own. And if you really want to help 'people'. Everywhere. Everyone. You have to know whose wishes to chase, whose to remember, whose to forget, and whose to dust away, as if they were your own. 'Everyone' can't be happy if every individual has every one of their dreams come true at once. Reality can't hold all that pressure. There isn't enough space." And, as if feeling that pressure inside herself, Lilian puffs out a big lungful of air that she doesn't seem to have really breathed in at any point, blowing a bit of raven bangs out of her face. "All children are selfish, Persephone. But once their brain develops a sense of empathy, it takes adulthood to beat it out of them. It's not unusual. It should have been expected. Rather, it was expected. Have you ever heard of how they'd train boys in ancient Sparta? How they'd give them not quite enough food, so that stealing or fighting were not just helpful but encouraged, and yet, they must be punished if found out, or else what would be the point?"
Lilian Rook	"I'd be a liar to say that I can feel 'bad' about getting my way. Or that anyone that mattered tried to make me feel bad about it. But even when you're an ignorant child, breaking every rule you can to see how far you can push, you always have that 'feeling' of where the shore ends and the ocean begins. Do you understand? You know that you could eat two cookies when you're told you can only have one. You know that you could leave school after you're dropped off for the day. You know that you could throw away your mother's favourite things because you're angry with her despite the inevitable punishment. But somehow, even when you're small and dumb, you know even in the midst of a temper tantrum, that you can't pick up that fire poker and hit your father with it, because that would transgress from 'breaking the rules' into 'breaking adult rules'." "Even if you're a terribly angry, nasty, hysterical little brat, the thought makes your blood run cold. You just know. You can't. What lies past that point is a singularity, and children aren't meant to go." Lilian sighs. "It's a strained example, I know. I don't particularly know what misbehaved little brats are usually like in ordinary, boring families." "I'm glad that you were given something that gets you everything you want, and makes you happy. I resent it, but I'm glad. In fact, I'd never have dreamed it possible, even in the whole wide Multiverse, that anyone would credibly try, never mind succeed, to raise someone who can't find real malice in their heart, no matter how much power they have. Your friends don't have power like that. They worry about their problems. They have to think about what they can and can't do. They feel uncertainty about whether or not they can 'win'. They measure themselves, constantly, against the world around them, to check if they're big enough to resist it." "But it's backwards for us. And when I tell things to go the way I want them to, they aren't . . . those big, romantic things that people can love and adore. It's . . . a way things can't be, but clearly they are. You talk about being 'real' a lot, Persephone. I worry that I am." Lilian turns to look Persephone in the eye, but it isn't for the sake of examination. It is a warning in of itself. A silent disclaimer. To make contact is a signage of consent. "I can show you why you should give up on me, Persephone. It's your choice. Whether you want to be like your friends, and help them believe they're in control. Or whether you want to know."
Persephone Kore	Despite the tone and subject of the conversation, phrases like "... what I laugh to even think of calling 'your psychokinesis'" still get Persephone to straighten up just a bit; still slightly quirk a muscle or two in her face. It's the conditioned response to that specific kind of "praise" that former Very Special Children still have, the kind who- at one point or another- didn't have anything to be proud of but their specialness. As Lilian's explanation winds down, I take a deep breath in through my nose, and let it out through my mouth. Dr. Carpathia taught me that, a long long time ago: how to find my center. I need that now. This is a lot to process, and a little too close to home. Her hands are balled up in her lap, one holding the hem of her sweater. "I want to know," she finally says. There's a novel look in her eyes when she meets Lilian's gaze: just a tiny bit wet, and more than a tiny bit uncertain. She manages a rueful smile. "Not because I'm strong, but because I'm weak. Because I selfishly can't stand the idea that I'm not allowed to make you happy. So either show me how, or show me why I can't!"
Lilian Rook	Lilian tries to smile, half succeeds, and half fails. "I hope that stays your answer. Or at least, I hope you're not weak in the way that they are. I know that they couldn't stand it. They'd break. It can't be that way for them. But I really hope you're different. Even if just different enough." Reaching out, Lilian lays her hands over Persephone's balled fists. "I can't let you in, Persephone. It doesn't work like that. But I can try to push it out. More than usual. So please understand that I'm trying not to make it hurt." The word to describe Lilian's heart had been 'Singularity'. A closed system in which any information contained within can only be inferred, but never observed. However, a singularity is not something from which nothing can be Expressed. Even black holes eventually radiate enormous quantities of energy. It could never be something so pure as Decompression. Nothing so holistic and fair. To make such a thing happen, Lilian has to conceptualize what she is projecting herself. Of course, that means any amount of it could be a lie, meant to shock and deceive. Or, it could be dubiously accurate, as these things are when people attempt to describe themselves, even as truthfully as possible. But it cannot be denied that it feels Faithful. That every part of it is Real and it is Meant. And that is good and bad enough. Because . . . §Because it's like all the air is gone. The stuff that fills space, that you ordinarily never think about, making itself known by its absence. But the void isn't of oxygen and nitrogen, but of something fundamentally experiential. Thinking, feeling, being, in a haze of black ash and smoke. A fog that drains away colour and a residue that smudges away details. Even as a thought, there's no equivalent to taste or smell to it. It's like sucking down carbon dioxide. Numbing. Asphyxiating. Drowning. Persistently wrong, unhealthy, but just subtle enough that all the information one gets is a 'check engine' light.§ §It is to know what it is like to be in a classroom, bored and vaguely trapped, the world receding behind smudged glass so that its distractions may be minimized. It is being stuck in a small room with two dozen voices all clamouring lazily to be heard over each other, concerned only with their closest neighbouring companion. It is to know the liminal slivers of time between lessons, nihilistically freeing, and yet wasted on the inescapable crush of so many loud and insistent voices, all talking loudly and fast, with such animation that they might just say everything they want to say before the next bell. It is to know that complete lack of restraint. That hedonistic ignorance of the voice three feet from you, and they of you, as the collective racket aggregates into something too incoherent to follow, but too identifiable to ignore.§ §Here and there, in the dizzy fog and noise and concave glass that pushes everything away, embers spark up in the ash and smoke, and fizzle away; brief points of light to lurch towards, stumbling blindly, but surely in some direction, in a sea of no directions at all. An individual voice, bright and clear, says something that penetrates the muddy, drowning waves of competing attentions and desires, and then dissolves back into the tidal mass, leaving only its echo as a guide. And it goes like this.§
Lilian Rook	Why does this bitch have to be so dumb Isn't it obvious what I'm talking about Don't even waste the time on her She's fucking stupid Won't ever get it Too much work fuck this She's Concord anyways Where the fuck does she get off talking about making me happy Stupid cunt got everything she ever wanted Even sits at the big special girl table Arrogant bitch She doesn't even know it I bet the other little shits all suck up to her I bet she loves it She seems nice No she's not She tried to humiliate me She wouldn't listen to me That psychokinetic bullshit is completely unfair It feels gross It touched me She used it on me just use it right back on her She's so lucky I didn't It's not fair I should make sure she knows I let her off Would serve her right Hahaha She actually listened to me Yeah so fucking what I don't need people to listen to me People should just think whatever I want them to think It's so easy They're all so soft It's like reading a book A book full of garbage I mean Seriously who wrote all these shitty extras There's too many of them Just make ten or a hundred or ten thousand read better Nobody would notice the difference Can't believe some fucking engineer made an off-regulation garden I should tell his bosses and see what they do No, I like this garden Okay but the atrium at home is better Way better Actually let's just buy it Buy the whole station Wouldn't that be funnier Yeah it'd be better to fuck with his bosses Like they can tell people they can't plant flowers because they have that much money when it's really a money microdick People who think they're rich with a few million are disgusting Really pitiful Honestly it's fucked up that other people are even allowed to have money If she likes this station so much then maybe I'll just give it to her I wonder how she'd react Probably confused Maybe upset Worth seeing though I should get her something she likes as a thank you What the fuck is the point of that Yeah seriously what would she ever do for me Probably anything actually that idiot Okay but none of it would be useful More useful than most of the jackasses I work with those Paladins my ass Since when have I ever fucking needed them It's upsetting I can't just work alone and take all the credit Or at least make them do whatever I say like the little bitches they are Really it must have been a mistake to ban slavery Just kidding though Sort of I think Fuck it who cares What matters is that there's nothing she can give me that I can't take Except the thing I want, I'm sure I almost have it, with Tamamo, and Strawberry, and Xion, I know if I try to take it I'll never get it Yeah and what if it's a pile of shit Just like everything else is a pile of shit Worthless Why do people care about any of that Why do people care just overall I can't fathom why I'd try to care about them How could anyone give a fuck about a bunch of Extras Seriously how do they pretend they're human How does anyone pretend to listen to each other How do they pretend to love each other How do they go about their lives without realizing that they're a bunch of creepy little dolls Bit characters at best Seriously it's like watching barbies playing on their own Super creepy I used to understand, like Cecilia, and big sister, I miss that, I think
Lilian Rook	Katrina is my bitch too She always was It's better that way She's so convenient Really she kept saying she'd stop helping but I could strangle a boy half to death and she'd still fix it I wonder if she'd still do that actually Honestly it was kind of fun I wonder if she'd still fix it if I fucked this bitch up right now Fucked her up real good But I like her, and I don't want to hurt her Let's be honest though I probably just like that she's such a gullible slut Yeah it's a change of pace at least Novelty is a treat Really though what a slut That fucking keyhole sweater oh my god She totally knows The shit I would do to that Let's do it right now She's basically asking for it She's yours to take Everyone is yours to take That would be just as hurtful, not happy Then just make her not remember Make her not know Make her like it Everyone should like everything I do to them They should accept their natural place Seriously it's so easy it makes me want to puke I only regret that I can't take pictures If only they knew what they looked like to me If only everyone knew what they were really like They'd be disgusted They'd know how gross they really are People aren't dolls just because I can dress them up and pose them, and I'm too old for dolls People aren't jack shit They only exist because I let them They don't even know that I'm graciously permitting them to exist They should thank me for their lives every single day I hate it I hate that mediocre little fucks get pat on the ass for doing jack shit but thinking nice thoughts and nobody even stops to acknowledge for one single fucking second how hard I work every single second of every single day not to just fucking erase them Why does nobody understand how easy it would be to kill them How bad I want to sometimes A lot of the time But I know that I can't But I can But I won't There's no reason not to Because I won't know how to stop At least put the proper fucking fear into them Yeah for real They don't understand They don't take me seriously enough They think I'm just some mean bitch who can handle herself in a fight and talk circles around them They think they have a prayer They think they're safe They think they can talk back to me Like that Tachibana whore God it felt good to chop her fucking hands off I hope she's okay I should have fucked her up worse Nobody was looking Nobody would know Make her regret it Make Muramasa regret it I put my fucking faith in that lousy bastard and he wasted it Seriously why did I think it was okay to put faith in people again Asshole I should have taken some photos God just imagine the look on his face I hope I didn't hurt him too badly though, he's sensitive
Lilian Rook	He took me lightly He thought he could say whatever He thought he was one of them They all think I'm one of them I know they keep mentally dragging me down to their level I'm a fucking goddess and they think I'm like them They wouldn't keep getting in my way if they knew If I showed everyone then the Watch and Concord and even the Paladins would fuck off and let me do what I want Thou shalt not wear thy power gaudily Just a little though I've been really really really good Better than all of them put together Maybe the purple one Or the inbred assassin Or that obnoxious cat No definitely the purple one Do everything to her but finish her off Then they'd get the memo They'd understand They'd respect me They'd appreciate me They'd worship me They'd hate me Yeah maybe don't burn every bridge Might fuck off to the Concord one day Can't say it isn't tempting I get no fucking respect I'm special I'm different I'm bigger than all of them Maybe the Concord would understand that Maybe they'd even put me in charge I must have been born to change things No the world must have been born for me to change But the thing I want to change is myself I don't need to change I'm perfect What do I not have If I want to know what happens next I can just check If I want to know what people are thinking I can just look If I don't like what someone thinks I can just tweak it If I don't like that someone exists then I can erase them Just like that Nobody can stop me I'm better than all of them put together I want to do it I want it so bad Just once Just to know what it feels like Just to prove I can do it I want to just go full throttle and watch everything and everyone melt away And then there really would be nothing left I'm so bored of this I hate this There's already nothing left to do but to fuck around None of this matters This is all just self-imposed challenge for the sake of it Restraining myself like I'm on a fucking diet Maintaining the integrity of what again Making things hard just to feel something about it That's what I have to keep doing until I can remember what feeling things without trying is like I know it It'll work One day it'll work.
Lilian Rook	It lasts perhaps twelve seconds, but even Lilian seems to have stopped of her own volition because it feels like forever to her as well. Not in the sense of a subjective extension of time, but as if the effort --and the effort of having to feel that way, even an amateur-- can only be so exhausting that each second of thought is bought with ten seconds of lifespan. And thank god for that. Because it didn't feel like it had a direction. There is no tug of war to those thoughts. They don't work like that. The rope isn't pulled in one direction, and away from the other. There are places where the sparks light repeatedly, unstable, erratic, but consistent enough to serve as flickering beacons to navigate by. Just a few. But there are places where they never spark too. Other names and places and thoughts that only gather up the black fog that shrinks back from the stumbling flashes of embers, and coalesce into something heavy and gradually fraying. There's no telling if it's truthful. There's no telling how accurate it is. But it is, if nothing else, a Faithful attempt. Nobody could make that up on their own.
Persephone Kore	The way I'm special has changed me a lot inside. I can't call myself human anymore without it feeling like a lie. She's been transformed by her 'specialness' like that too, hasn't she? I can't imagine what to expect, except that it must be just as far from 'human' in a different way. "I believe you," Persephone says. Her unconsciously clenched hand turns over and opens, offering Lilian to hold it more traditionally. Her face is tense with concern, but she manages a half-hearted little smile anyway. "Even though it'll hurt, you're not allowed to be worried about me. It's completely illegal. I'm supposed to be the one who worries about other people." (Ordinary people's feelings don't overwhelm Persephone, even in aggregate. In the inside, she is vast in a way normally reserved for heavenly bodies; she feels what they feel in miniature, but contaminating her is like trying to poison the ocean. This once, she tries to squeeze herself down to human scale, to fully immerse herself in those shared feelings. It wouldn't be fair to Lilian if I didn't. This is a mistake. It would've been bad enough already.) ---- The space station glass is spiderwebbed with dangerous cracks. The metal of the floor, ceiling, and walls is twisted and buckled as if warped by a gravitational whirlpool. Half the arboretum is torn up or splintered like a hurricane passed through it. The light of the stars outside shimmers and lenses subtly as it passes through errant dents in spacetime. Only the bench on which they sit is untouched. "I'm sorry," Persephone says- for what specifically, it isn't clear- and it comes out hoarser than she'd meant it to. Startled, she reaches up to her face; her fingertips come away slicked with tears. "Ahaha. You were right. I really wasn't ready for that at all." Metal smooths itself out and is cold-welded back together. Spare pieces of scrap go to buttress the cracks in the windows, melted down by the heat of stellar compression and poured into the fine gaps like ferrous kintsugi. Shredded turf is smoothed back down, blade by blade, but there's nothing she can do for the tree that's gone through a woodchipper. It takes her several moments to try and pull herself together enough for more coherent thoughts. Those dark red arm-warmers help dry her face, becoming a couple shades darker in the process. "You keep choosing to do the right thing," she finally says, still sounding a little raw. "Even when it's harder than anything I've ever done. But you don't let yourself feel happy for doing it. Why? ... When you do something right, shouldn't you feel good? Otherwise, your brain gets tired of doing it." "I hope it gets easier someday. I really, really do. But until then, I... I still want to help. It's unfair that good things don't happen when you make good decisions. If you want things to be fair for other people, at least let me make them a little fairer for you." Her eyelashes are still wet, and her smile is shaky from errant facial muscles trying to pll it into a grimace. But for being so effortful, it feels more sincere. Maybe there's a symmetry in that.
Lilian Rook	Even Lilian flinches when the station around her --the thing separating her from the infinite void of space-- crumples inwards as if it were painted on the inside of a roll of aluminium foil that someone grabbed too hard. She is familiar with what Persephone claims her powers are like, and has experienced that much herself, but Lilian still has no strong reason to believe that they'd be so clement when triggered by accident or emotionally like this, and even then, if it'd make any difference to space. "Careful, please. I'm not exactly wearing my moon suit." Lilian says, as only a very thin attempt to gauge tension. It's a nothing-sentence. Of course Lilian had planned for Persephone potentially breaching the station before even coming here; she can be ready and out in literally no time. But that's completely besides the point. "Now I feel a little bit bad, after you told me who planted those and why." she says about the trees, with a little more substance to her voice. Why bother Seriously what's she even going to do This doesn't matter She doesn't matter She isn't real But she feels more real than most When Persephone ostensibly appears to be coming down from that shock, Lilian settles herself again with a bland and professionally apologetic smile that can't help but corrupt itself into a silent wince. "Are choices like that supposed to make you happy?" she asks Persephone, and it doesn't feel rhetorical. "If you answer a question correctly on a test, it feels good, because there's a reward that tells you that you did well. But if you answer a question someone just happened to ask you correctly, you don't think anything of it, right? You'd only feel stupid if you got it wrong. And when people ask you those questions day in and day out . . ." "I think sometimes there's no reward for doing the right thing. I think all there is to it is that you didn't make anything worse. I think that's the only way it makes sense. Trying to bend reality into fitting the alternative; that's how you get those juvenile little narratives about 'heroes' and 'villains'. The things that make you feel good are the things you're able to enjoy because you didn't ruin them, and even those still demand that you work for them." "Of course, it's not fair that some people are better at not ruining things than other people. But then it's also unfair that I'm better at most things than other people, so I guess it had to even out somewhere." Lilian finally attempts a less fake smile after that, thin and lame as it is. "If nothing else, I at least commend you for being stubborn enough to stick to that opinion. But I hope you understand what I mean, that you shouldn't make every wish come true. That reality can't hold everyone's wishes at once. So please, play favourites. Be mindful of who you are enabling, and what you're setting them up to do. Be unfair. I wouldn't mind talking to you more, if I can trust you to do that."
Persephone Kore	It's easy to read Persephone's expression in the immediate aftermath of warping the arboretum: guilty, but not panicked. She, at least, doesn't think they were in any serious danger; her gaze lingers longer on the ruined tree than on the patched-up windows. "Yeah. Me too. ... I'll figure out some way to make it up to that engineer. I promise." Phony turns back to look down at her hands in her lap. One of them comes up to wipe her cheek again; she sniffles a little too, but tissues aren't forthcoming. "I feel the difference between wishes in people's gravity. Of course I know some are more important than others. ... But I don't think I can play favorites with people, Lilian. Not without feeling bad about it. It's supposed to be 'nobody left behind', not 'the people I don't care about left behind'." That sounds like some kind of organizational byword- or a fragment of it- from the way she says it. She straightens up a little, donning a moree confident smile with the change of topic; it's the kind of posture and expression that instantly makes you into a confidant. "Anything that's hard, but good, ought to make you exactly as happy as it was hard. Even if it only does a little bit of good," she insists firmly. "That's how your brain knows to keep going. And things that are effortless, even if they do a lot of good, don't need to make you happy at all." "Otherwise, you're running on fumes. Or," she says knowingly, "you get carried away on easy heroism." Most things are effortless for me. The hard parts aren't tasks I can finish. But helping people like you... I can let myself feel happy about that. At least, I can't find an excuse convincing enough not to. That's followed up with a smile that borders on 'teasing'. "So either 'being good' is effortless for you, or you deserve to feel happy for doing it. You have to pick one! It can't be neither. And if you deserve to feel happy, but don't... that's something I can help."
Lilian Rook	"Well, no need to worry about that. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me, so I can see to his little garden project. And possibly some leave." Lilian replies to Persephone, on the subject of the tree. "Mind you, 'a tree' has a bit greater value, when I'm from, than most places, which seem to take them for granted. But the reason money is good is because it means you don't have any reason to 'just take things', and you have every reason not to 'just ignore things'." "But people are made of their wishes, Persephone. If your goal is to make everyone you meet happy, perhaps you might have a sliver of a chance of getting there. But it won't be by giving them what they think they want. Ultimately, people simply can't know what will make them happy for real." Her smile turns to more of a smirk, but it's also more genuine that way. "Well, you're not wrong about that last part. And I'll give you a B+ for the logic set. Of course I'd like to believe I deserve it. We all like to believe we deserve all kinds of things. That means our universe runs on something akin to fairness, and fairness is what the universe must have wanted to exist when it conjured up the absurdity that is humanity." "I'll also admit that I'd taken your presentation as . . . more 'lighthearted' than it seems to be. That is, your belief in those precious axioms of yours. It's certainly a reason to be more worthy of respect than most. But if I knew how you could easily fulfill it, we wouldn't be here." Lilian rubs her temple. "Ah well. I got what I wanted. As usual, admittedly, but I can't complain. Since I'm a good little law-abiding Paladin, I won't worry about you and your involvement with your Concord friends, because I hear from a very reliable source that's illegal. Instead, I'll do the gracious thing, and compensate you for your trouble. Whatever you like."